May 30, 2004

Now that Russell is moving out and I do not have a roommate yet, my rent goes from $672.50 a month to $1570 a month! I get to pay $95 a month for the right to a second parking space when I do find a roommate. I also get the fun of trying to find said roommate which is becoming harder than I expected. Thanks!

May 29, 2004

Gah, I can't believe I forgot to post this earlier! So, on Monday, I had a cashier ask me about my age. Well, it happened again on Thursday! I was going to Sports Authority to buy an ankle brace for Kat when it happened. I picked out the brace and headed to the first available cashier. I paid with a credit card and had to use one of the electronic signature readers. She told me to keep my card out for signature validation so I also pulled out my drivers license. My signature never looks right on this electronic devices so I did it just in case. I guess the cashier looked at my birthdate because when she handed my cards back to me:



"Are you 23, 24?"

"23, why, do I seem older, younger?"

"More mature."

"Any reason?"

I'm 21 and guys our age seem younger. You dress well, like you made it somewhere, you seem established."



The funny thing is, I was wearing a long-sleeve jersey material shirt (Kenneth Cole, but she couldn't tell that), Gap slacks and black Puma sneakers! I definitely wasn't sporting "mature" looking attire. Oh well.

May 28, 2004

Woohoo, I donated $10 to MusicBrainz today. Horrible name but great service. You feed it an MP3 and it spits back out the correct Artist, album, genre, etc and resaves the file with the correct information automatically. Totally free but also totally worth a $10 donation.

CNN.com - Three children found decapitated in apartment - May 27, 2004: I don't really know how to comment on this situation. A mother returns to find her three children decapitated. The only possible reason I can think of is some sort of debt that went unpaid.

May 27, 2004

Doctor

cure me

what is the cause of my condition?

This madness

shoots me

like bullets smashing glass in a silent movie.

My brain is triggered to wake up if I hear a diesel engine idling outside of my window. Why? Well, back in senior year, I was sharing a parking permit with a roommate. I was almost towed twice for parking in my apartment lot without the permit but I heard the idling tow truck and woke up! Anyway, there was a truck idling outside of my apartment this morning around 7 AM and thus I woke up.

May 24, 2004

I really shouldn't be posting right now as I should be working on the SEVEN specifications I have to write in the next few weeks. I'd tell you more, but then I'd have to make the internet sign an NDA and I just don't have time for the paperwork this week.


Anyway, during the daily Jeff-and-Mike lunch extravaganza, something a bit humorous happened. Jeff and I have a pretty set list of restaurants we go to (Quizno's, Qdoba, Chipotle, Ribeye, Nasai Teriyaki, Red Robin, Matt's Famous, Arby's, Taj Palace, Yen Ching, etc) and some of the places have started to remember us. Today at one of the usuals, my order number was 29. The cashier said "29, close to 30... are you over 30?". I had remembered from a previous conversation that she said she had been out of school for 10 years and just got her degree last year so I assumed she was about 30 though she looked not a day over 21. My response was "No, a bit lower", giving her a thumbs down motion.


"29?"

"No."

"27?"

"Nope, lower."

At this point, she just looked at me, scared to give another incorrect answer. I held up two fingers, said "23" and transitioned to three fingers. She was quite flabergasted and made some commented about how I looked so much older while she looked so much younger saying that people don't think of her as a day older than 20, 19 even!


Funny stuff.

May 18, 2004

All I have to say is dinga ding dang my dangalong linglong.

May 16, 2004

Karamazov: "He also discusses his belief that men only practice love for their fellow man out of a belief in God and the immortality of their soul. If they did not believe, Ivan says, than there would exist no incentive or reason for them to practice love and kindness. If they do not believe, then the only motive for action would logically be self-interest. "


Is that a truism? Do you believe that, in a mentality lacking love and kindness, the only logical conclusion would be that all actions would be driven by self-interest? The implication here is that self-interest is inherently a negative characteristic. Is it not possible that, while looking out for yourself, you can also look out for others? The man that helps and cares for others may draw greater fortune to himself. By looking out for others, you are in a way looking out for yourself?


Honestly, there is very little that I do that does not benefit myself in some way. I doubt there have been more than two cases in the past five years where I have done something that I did not think would ultimately benefit myself. If I make a sacrifice at work to help someone out, I believe that this action will be remembered and either they would help me out or I would gain better standing in their mind. If I was to perform community service, it would partially be because I could talk about it later and have others think highly of me. I'm selfish, but sometimes it benefits others.

May 15, 2004

Wow, some guys just have it rough. For whatever reason, 107.7 The End in Seattle took Andy Savage off their morning show. I could probably look it up, but I really don't have the patience right now. For a couple months after that, they would play hour-long themed blocks of music: 80s punk, new wave, grunge, etc. Finally, they brought in Marconi and Tiny for the morning program. About a month after that, The End changed formats and dropped them. Sucks!


At the time, they were on two radio stations, The End and a station in "Porkland" (their infantile name for Portland). Well, looks like they got booted from Portland as well for joking about the Berg beheading. D'oh!

May 14, 2004

Now that Russell is moving out, there are a few things in the kitchen that I need to replace:


  • Coffee pot
  • Coffee grinder
  • Blender
  • Knives
  • Glasses
  • Toaster
  • Tea kettle
  • Sugar jar
  • Foreman Grill

Angry Cell Phone Customer Trashes Verizon Store

POSTED: 11:43 a.m. EDT May 14, 2004



FARGO, N.D. -- A man who said he was fed up with his cellular phone service went to a Fargo mall and started hurling phones across a store, striking an employee and causing more than $2,000 in damage, authorities said.



Jason Perala, 22, of Fargo, told The Forum newspaper that he planned only to yell at employees at Verizon Wireless.



"Then I just lost it," he said. "I just started grabbing computers and phones and throwing them. I just destroyed the place. ... I kind of regret that I did it, but I hope my message got across."



Police said Perala took off his shirt and put on safety glasses before throwing around computers, phones and other items.



One employee was struck in the shoulder by a phone before he and other workers dashed into an office, locked the door and called police, Sgt. Kevin Volrath said. Other businesses in the West Acres mall lowered their steel security gates during Thursday's incident.



Perala was arrested without incident and jailed on charges of felony criminal mischief and misdemeanor simple assault.

May 13, 2004

July 1st: Share 2 bedroom / 2 bath downtown Bellevue apartment

It's official; I'm looking for a new roommate! Russell decided to live in Seattle and I decided I wanted to stay where I am now so the roommate hunt is on!

May 12, 2004

FloorBurn won last night, 5-0, I scored a goal and we are in second place!

May 6, 2004

I've added a few pictures to my moblogging gallery including one of my odometer in binary. That would be 18 miles total and 6.5 on the trip in decimal.

May 5, 2004

Cars I would consider buying at this point in my life:


Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution

Subaru Impreza WRX STi

Pontiac Solstice (unreleased)

Honda S2000

Mazda Mazdaspeed Miata

BMW M Coupe (no longer offered)

Infiniti G35 Coupe


It's a shame that I do not feel terribly strong about any of them.

Speaking of cars, I totally forgot to say that I officially own the Camaro now! I took a few crappy pictures; I will try to get some better ones in the sun soon. So far, I've only driven the car in the parking garage at work and a few blocks around my building. I am still pretty horrible with the manual, but I'm getting better.


Last night, Jeff and I took it out for a little spin. Everything was going fine until I stopped at a stop sign and just couldn't seem to get the car going. I kept stalling and stalling and stalling. It felt very weird to me since I was giving it a ton of gas, it just didn't seem like enough. After about 12 tries I finally got the car going! It still seemed to be acting up because the revs were so low. I stopped at the next stop sign and had the same issue! Finally Jeff hopped in, played with the shifter and turns out, I was in third gear! I'm just surprised that I actually got it to go that one time. Oh well, Jeff said the shifter is fairly narrow and thus it's hard to tell which gear you are in. I just think I am dumb and that is one more thing I will pay attention to when driving stick.

The more I read about the Pontiac Solstice, the more I like it. Take this article from Autoweek. They get to test drive a few engineering mules and were quite impressed. If the car is impressive in 85% complete form and Lutz is driving this home as the most important GM project, the final result is going to be amazing.


UPDATE: The car may only have 170 HP, but it also have 170 lb-ft in comparison to the 142 HP and 125 lb-ft found in a base Miata. Even the new Mazdaspeed version only has 178 hp and 166 lb-ft.

May 3, 2004

While Jeff and I were at the movies tonight, a lady dropped a large handful of change while at the consession stand. It was at least 50 coins, so I immediately bent down to help her pick it up. She was a bit older, so she let me pick it all up. Her husband must have been at the bathroom, because he showed up just as I finished. They both thanked me and started to walk off. Just then, I got a good look at her husband. Turns out, it was Lenny Wilkins! Quote from NBA.com about Lenny: "Lenny and his wife Marilyn have three children, Leesha, Randy and Jaime, and two grandchildren, Ashley and Nicole. They make their off-season home in Seattle." Pretty cool.

Sorry everyone, the GMail accounts are gone!

My take on GMail.


Ok, I've only been using it for a short while, but I haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet. The first issue is that all email is sorted by "conversations", which is basically what everyone but Microsoft and GMail call threads. For those of you that don't know what that means, a thread/conversation is just what it sounds like, a collection of email messages relating to a specific topic. On the most basic level, a conversation is an original message and any replies to that message. Certain mail clients assign a thread ID and thus you can change the message subject and it will still be a part of the original thread/conversation. Either GMail or Yahoo doesn't support thread ID because I changed the subject on a thread and GMail started a new "conversation".



There are a ton of keyboard shortcuts, which is interesting for a webmail client. Seeing as I used pine for my email for 6 years, I'm quite used to navigating my email with a keyboard... in pine! Using it in gmail isn't as easy as I expected. There are keyboard shortcuts for navigating various messages and conversations, but very basic actions, like cancelling the composition of a message, has to be done by mouse. I do love that the keyboard shortcut for reporting spam is the excalamation key... it just goes so well with most spam: "Ge.t a m.a$siv3 mem.b3r! buttercup obtuse bingo cxoiuqweijfd4klhjd7" My natural response is "!".



GMail has a concept of "All mail" and "archive". The main action for all emails is to "archive" it. It doesn't place the message in the trash, it doesn't move it to a specific folder, it just moves the email out of your inbox. The only way to view archived mails is to use the All Mail view. All Mail shows any mail in your inbox, your sent mail "folder" and anything you have archived. It does not show any spam or trash emails.



Instead of supporting folders like most email clients (web or desktop), GMail has introduced the concept of "Labels". Well, I shouldn't say introduced, but this is the first time I've seen it in relation to an email client. Instead of storing a conversation (see above) in various default or unique folders, you can assign one or more labels to the conversation. Let's say that you wanted to save all conversations from a specific person in a specific folder and you wanted to save all conversations about a specific topic in a specific folder, what happens if your specifics collide? Do you try to decide which folder takes presidence? With labels, you can give the conversation labels for both the sender and the topic. Like most folder views, there is a list of labels so you can jump to the list of all conversations with a specific label.



GMail also supports filters which works hand in hand with labels. You can filter on sender, receiver, subject, words in the body and words missing from the body. The actions you can take are skip inbox (meaning it places the mail into the archive (see above)), apply a specific label or move it directly to the trash. You cannot mark anything as spam through the filter.

One little feature that I saw in their help files but they did not actually implement related to attachments. Instead of showing the common and generic paper clip icon to denote an attachment, GMail would use an icon to represent the file type of the attachment. If it was a PDF, the common PDF icon would be used, etc. I tested this out, and it's just a paper clip. Shucky darn.



Overall, I'm sure that I will get used to conversation view, labels and archive and be very happy with my free 1000 MB webmail client harnessing Google!

Do you want to try out GMail? Since GMail is still in a test period, acceptance is by invitation only. I received my invitation through Blogger, but now that I am a user I can invite two more people! The first two to contact me get dibs. (Note: If you ask via email, I only check once a day and thus it would be faster to txt/IM/call me. If you email me right away yet I get two phone calls after your email was sent, you ain't getting GMail from me.)